: Spoons, forks and knives earn a place at the table in an
exhibition that sheds new light on the history of flatware and
sets its place amid the sumptuous pleasures of dining. "Feeding
Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500-2005," at the
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, provides an innovative
explication of the history of culinary culture and its refinement
since the Sixteenth Century. The exhibit explores the 500-year
history of flatware and cutlery and the range of materials used
to make them. It also surveys the vast array of objects used in
polite, and even impolite, society.
The site itself sets the tone for the exhibit. The Cooper-Hewitt,
National Design Museum, occupies the landmark Andrew Carnegie
Mansion that the industrialist built on the corner of Fifth
Avenue and 91st Street in chic Uptown Manhattan. The 64-room
house completed in 1901 is the standard of the Gilded Age, an era
in which American plutocrats celebrated their wealth, often with
abandon. Lavish parties were the order of the day, up to and
including formal dinners on horseback.
The genesis of "Feeding Desire," says Sarah Coffin, curator of
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century decorative arts at the
Cooper-Hewitt, was the museum's own extraordinary collection of
flatware and cutlery augmented by the 1985 gift of the Robert L.
Metzenberg collection, which spans the Sixteenth through the
Nineteenth Centuries. Other Twentieth Century acquisitions,
supplemented by a major loan from the Tiffany archives, provided
enough material for a substantive exhibition. Few such shows have
appeared in the United States.
The elegant silver gilt covered soup tureen and ladle were made
by Tiffany in 1881.
Fittingly, the exhibit opens in the former Carnegie dining
room where the table is set for eight with flatware and serving
pieces of the Gilded Age. While the focus of the exhibition is on
knives, forks and spoons, the dining setting exemplifies the lavish
tables of the era; period ceramics and glassware are included for
that purpose.
The grand display of lavish silver services attests to the new
level of wealth that was achieved during the Gilded Age,
especially in America. Equally important was the manifestation of
refinement evinced by the knowledge of how to use these grand
(and odd) new tools. Using the point of a knife to pick one's
teeth at table had suddenly become quite unacceptable.
Adorning the table in the Carnegie dining room is a seven-piece
Tiffany silver flatware that includes dessert spoons, dessert
forks, a butter knife, dinner forks, fruit knives, dinner knives
and tablespoons. The table is also set with cobalt and gilt
dinner plates by Minton & Co., for Tiffany, and eight
engraved water goblets and eight wine glasses.
An astonishing array of other pieces was required for the
well-covered table of the Gilded Age. They run the gamut from ice
tongs and ice spoons to separate spoons for lobster and clams.
A splendid silver vegetable dish whose design is attributed to
George Paulding Farnham, Tiffany's design director, is in place
along with an imposing 1881 silver gilt covered soup tureen and
ladle.
